A drive station for an escalator or moving walkway includes, for the drive of a long-link chain of the conveying run, two chainwheels, which are driven by a combination of roller chainwheels flange-mounted thereat, drive chains and a geared motor. The conveying run chainwheels are connected by a common hollow shaft. Pressed into the center of each conveying run chainwheel is a roller bearing which is seated by its inner race on a non-rotating central axle, the ends of which are fixed in axle carriers bolt-connected to the support construction. Such a sub-assembly described here is designated a "chainwheel sub-assembly" in the following.
Although "lubricated for life", such roller bearings utilized in chainwheel subassemblies are highly loaded by the operating forces experienced and are often exposed to a moist, corrosive atmosphere. Accordingly, they normally have to be changed several times in the course of the service life of the conveying equipment. In known embodiments of such escalators and moving walkways the change of the roller bearings requires complicated additional manipulations such as the separating of the conveying run and the drive chains, the lifting out of the chain sub-assembly from the support construction, as well as the reassembly of the demounted and separated components. An additional problem is that during this time the escalator cannot be walked on as a stairway.